Controversial "Nymphomaniac" trailer raises eyebrows at Google

This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2013, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

When is something too sexy for the Internet? Apparently, when Google thinks it is.

The search engine company, which also owns the video-sharing site, YouTube, made news earlier this week when it decided to shut down a brief 57-second movie trailer for the upcoming Lars von Trier film, "Nymphomaniac."

The newest trailer for the film, which co-stars Shia LaBeouf, doesn't leave much to the imagination  as I would imagine the film doesn't. It includes graphic footage of sex of different types, so much so that Google took the trailer down on Friday from the movie's official YouTube channel.

But it didn't take long for Google to reverse its position. Shortly after Google was contacted by The Hollywood Reporter on Friday, the company restored the video on the movie company's channel.

"With the massive volume of videos on our site, sometimes we make the wrong call," a YouTube spokesperson told The Hollywood Reporter. "When it's brought to our attention that a video has been removed mistakenly, we act quickly to reinstate it."

The channel did add an age-gate to the video, which requires a person confirm he or she is an adult before seeing it, which I'm sure stopped a lot of over-excited pre-teens.

 Vince Horiuchi

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